UPTH Loses N1.8bn To Indigent, Run Away Patients …Performs First Successful IVF-ET, 39 Years After

The authorities of the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), in Rivers State, say they have lost about N1.8billion to indigent and ran away patients from the hospital after treatment.
The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Prof Henry Ugboma made the figures public during activities to mark his one year anniversary at the hospital complex, Alakahia, Port Harcourt, last weekend.
Ugboma said, “We lost over N1.8billion through various infractions. Out of this sum, we lost N1billion to indigent patients. We also lost N0.4billion to patients who absconded after treatment. We further lost N0.4billion to stealing by all categories of staff and related sharp practices”.
He said that over the years, one major challenge of the facility had been inadequate funding of capital projects, adding that, “this particularly explains the presence of abandoned projects, occasioned by national economic constraints”.
Nonetheless, he remarked that the hospital has made some progress in service delivery in all clinical and non-clinical areas, stressing that, recently, the Nuclear Medicine; Oncology and Fire Fighting departments were fortified and expanded.
Ugboma disclosed that by 2020, three more schools would be opened at the teaching hospital, and named them to include Post Basic Nursing and Opthalmic Nursing units.
So far, he submitted that its preparatory programme for foreign-trained doctors for their qualification has recorded huge success in the last one year with pass rate of over 85 per cent.
The UPTH chief medical director also lamented the lingering security challenges at the hospital in the past three months as hoodlums harass and steal from patients and staff.
“Our facility has been under attack in the last three months by hoodlums, who harass and dispossess patients, staff, students and passersby within the hospital environment”, Ugboma lamented.
Ugboma further said that when he assumed duty in January, 2018, he inherited a dire financial indebtedness from the former acting Chief Medical Director, Dr.Tobin West.
The CMD said he met unpaid salary and welfare arrears, debt burden for drug revolving fund and other 11 revolving fund projects, insisting that he met series of abandoned projects in the hospital by the predecessor.
Ugboma said on assumption of duty, he met unsatisfactory service delivery occasioned by general work apathy, staff indiscipline and lack of motivation and infighting amongst staff.
The excited CMD also said the hospital was poorly maintained when he took over, coupled with decay of infrastructure and long waiting hours for patients to be attended to by nurses and doctors.
According to him, “Poor and challenged staff, industrial disharmony, mutual distrust, disrespect remained the order of the day as staff indiscipline unabatedly soared”.
“The decay was rapid, progressive and unchallenged, the whole environment looked abandoned while mosquitoes fed fat on patients and staff alike”, Ugboma said.
He described inadequate funding of the hospital as a major setback by the federal government and appeal for adequate funding to improve the hospital.
UPTH, Ugboma said has improve in its mandate on research, training and health care delivery service to the people as the management had made some progress in area of manpower, staff welfares, infrastructural development and others.
He told The Tide that during his 365 days in office, over N600million has been paid out of all owed debt.
The hospital he said, had completed and commissioned the abandoned Regional Burns Centre, completed the Paediatrics complex and commissioned a new Central Laboratory Sample Collection Centre.
Ugboma told The Tide that under one year as the CMD, he had equipped the Assisted Reproductive Technology ART Unit of the hospital which had commenced service with the first baby given birth to through the In-Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer IVF – ET.
Other services rendered at the ART include Artificial Inseminations, intra-cytoplasmic Sperm Injection ICSI, Gamete and Embryo Donation and freezing by Cryopreservation and Surrogacy, Office hysterosocopy to look at the endometrial pathology.
It would be recalled that the UPTH originally began operations in 1980, but was later officially commissioned by the Federal Government in 1985.

Kevin Nengia & Chinedu Wosu